Roboticon 2009
From RoboticonWiki
--CLARIFICATION-- The robot must be built of pieces only from a lego Mindstorms NXT kit. You are limited to these pieces and cannot include other pieces or extra sensors.
You own a company that has been hired to deliver miniature Death Stars to anxious buyers. This task could be mundane, but your company builds monster robots, so you've decided to build one of them to make deliveries.
Your robot shall be given four Death Stars to throw into people's open garages as it moves down a road. Every person you deliver to knows ahead of time to have their door open. Your task is to create a robot that will follow a straight road and deposit each Death Star into a garage.
The road you have to travel is twelve inches wide (between curbs), white, and flat. Its surface is a futuristic sort of paper. On either side of the road are solid, immovable curbs. They are approximately 1.5 inches thick by approximately 3.5 inches high and run unbroken for the road's entire length. There are three horizontal one inch thick black lines and a single horizontal one inch thick green line crossing the road. Each of these lines run from curb to curb, perpendicular to both. The road will be no less than nine feet long, with at least twenty-four inches between the start of the track and the first line, and twelve inches or more between any two lines. The last line will be at least twenty-four inches from the end of the track.
Every black line indicates the center of a garage. These garages shall be placed nine inches to the left of the road, so that they open perpendicular to it. The interior of each door will be nine inches wide (parallel to the road) by twelve inches high by 3.5 inches thick (perpendicular to the road). The horizontal green bonus line shall denote the center of a garage placed nine inches to the right (instead of the left) of the road, effectively mirrored in orientation from the other garages. It could be any distance along the road; within the dimensions provided, the green line may come before, after, or at some point between the other garages. In the event that it comes first or last, the green line is treated as "the first line" or "the last line".
Your robot shall try to get a Death Star through every door. Each Death Star resembles a styrofoam sphere, approximately one inch in diameter. To achieve points for getting a Death Star into a garage, the garage door must be capable of being "closed." To be closed, a piece of paper must be able to cover the near side of the door (the same side as the track) and not be obstructed by any Death Star or any piece of your robot. A garage that cannot close indicates a Death Star that was not successfully deposited, and is not worth any points. You will be given four Death Stars, enough for the three black doors and the single green door. Again, the doors may appear in any order. Once a Death Star is through its door, that section of the task is considered complete. Each team has the option of removing one Death Star from the track if it interferes with the closing of a door.
Every door with a Death Star through it is worth a single point. For passing the last line entirely so that no attached part of your robot remains behind the line, you will receive two additional points and your run will be complete. No additional points shall be awarded for additional Death Stars through any single door. This means that you must put exactly one Death Star in each garage to receive full points. Again, you will be given exactly four Death Stars to deliver.
Teams will be ranked by number of points, where the highest number of points is the best rank. If multiple bots score equal numbers of points on a run, they will be ranked by time. Your robot's brick must stay "on the road" (between the curbs) at all times, and the robot must not exceed twelve inches in any dimension at any time for the duration of its run. This challenge will consist of two equally weighted heats, each of which has a three minute maximum runtime. After you have passed the final line of the three minutes has elapsed your points will be tallied. This is when the doors will be checked to see if they can be closed and teams can opt to remove a Death Star.
If there anything you're unclear on, you can email your questions to roboticon@socis.ca.
The judges' rulings will be the final word on any matter involving any of these specifications.
Please see below an example track.
Please see below a picture of a deathstar
